I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. If we are to realize and maintain our humanity, we must come to a moral comprehension of earth and air as it is perceived in the long turn of seasons and of years.

N. Scott Momaday

Categorized in : Years Blood Air

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.

N. Scott Momaday

destiny imagination native-american

There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there.

N. Scott Momaday

eye memories travel

Once in his life, a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.

N. Scott Momaday

men believe hands

Anything is bearable if you can make a story out of it.

N. Scott Momaday

bearable stories history

To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil’s Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space.

N. Scott Momaday

devil space forever

I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.

N. Scott Momaday

dark dream night

If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe.

N. Scott Momaday

power-of-words ifs believe

It's a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And, as I say on occasion, it may have to be believed in order to be seen.

N. Scott Momaday

landscape order history

A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things.

N. Scott Momaday

all-things sound giving

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

N. Scott Momaday

oral-tradition stronger way

I sometimes think the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian.

N. Scott Momaday

white sometimes thinking

Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.

N. Scott Momaday

voice dog night

Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.

N. Scott Momaday

medicine magic sound

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, and dwell upon it.

N. Scott Momaday

home giving men

For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

N. Scott Momaday

survival chance doe

The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on. You cannot begin with the second word.

N. Scott Momaday

thirds giving firsts

The highest human purpose is always to reinvent and celebrate the sacred.

N. Scott Momaday

gardening purpose religion

They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.

N. Scott Momaday

soul names long

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other. The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated. And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence.

N. Scott Momaday

writing attitude hands

Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.

N. Scott Momaday

creation imagination thinking